Wild Seas, Wilder Cities
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Wild Seas, Wilder Cities, Helen Salsbury (ed.), Pens of the Earth, 2024, 298 pages, £10.99.
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There are truths that run through the substance of all good writing, like fissures through rock… or perhaps, as in Helen Scadding’s ‘Horn’s Cross’, through ‘hammered granite’… and this collection, evolved from the inspirational Pens of the Earth, shows how meaningful, themed narratives can make a shift towards change. The focus in this unique collaboration lifts us away from the doom-laden outcomes so often associated with environmental issues, instead celebrating alternative perspectives… not just a ‘sea’, but a ‘mindset’ change, a change that has scope to develop beyond the initial inspirations.
Change, like rock fissures, often evolves slowly, and Tina MacNaughton’s ‘Voices’ demonstrates the power of small changes. The protagonist, a vulnerable senior citizen, takes on a younger, arrogant antagonist. Through a simple surface lens, we see modes of thinking revealed. Voices of hope are expressed through emerging characters such as a young boy, seagulls and even the landscape. MacNaughton asks the question many grapple with in the gloom of the threatening future: ‘but what difference can I make?’
The potential for individuals to make a difference is celebrated and echoed throughout this collection. Settings take their backdrop from streets, from gardens, from small communities and local arenas. Characters are equally nuanced but recognisable, revealed through engagement with age-old materials, such as in Mark Cassidy’s ‘Window of Opportunity’, or the child in Margaret Jennings’ ‘Mud’ who holds a whole bio-diverse world in her hands. Regardless of setting, character or plot, these observations encourage the powerful possibilities that small actions bring.
Eileen Phyall’s ‘Fish of the Sea’ gives us a nostalgic glance backward in time, acting as a platform for exploring ways such a re-visit to the past might create a safer environment for the future, and ‘Mermaids’ Purses’ by Christina Moran also looks to the past, finding realities through a surreal and fantastical view. Richard Williams’ ‘Two Gardens’ uses a Lockdown experience to enter a cleaner, clearer environment from yesteryear, while Andrew Larder’s ‘Stream’ also draws from that COVID era, reflecting not only on sounds in nature, but also raising philosophical questions such as ‘can we ever own a tree?’
Helen Salsbury’s ‘Socks’ brings us a more contemporary angle, tackling the poignancy of age and death, alongside the hope woven into the ongoing fluidity of nature and rebirth. This connection with the potential of ‘life after life’ is further reflected in the themes of Sue Harper’s ‘The Bug Hotel’, told through a memoir-first-person style, while Rio Bivens shows us how nature can bring hope, hope can heal and lost friendships be found again in ‘Another Drop in the Ocean’.
There is poetry woven throughout; pieces that make us stop, think and, hopefully, look (and read) again. Jane Andreoli’s offering, ‘Weeds’, considers how the act of naming something changes perception, creates connection and shows how an initially innocent nine lines (I include the space here, as a statement in itself) evokes new perceptions. The twist in Maggie Sawkins’ ‘Nigra Bamboo’ not only refers to the ‘heart’ of a plant, but the resolution quickened the beat of my own heart. There are other references to the resilience of plants, sharp observations such as in Liz Kay’s reflections in ‘VE Day’, or Margaret Doyle’s gentle but powerful ‘A Legacy of Greening’, again bringing awareness to the vast transformations small gestures can make.
Vin Adams’ ‘Buzz or Cut’ achieves a quirky poetic style in a thoughtful offering, the character’s grapple with the value (or not) of weeds leading to an incisive resolution both for the gardener, and the poem itself.
Levels of research support both the prose and the poetry, the latter reflected well in Sue Spiers’ informative, visual imagery that explores the seahorse habitats in ‘Studland Bay Eco-buoy’.
This marrying of research with fiction is perhaps an essential with a collection that draws from environmental realities, and in among the offerings there are distinct non-fictions too. Gordon Watts informs readers about accumulated ‘stuff’ and the waste and damage that such accumulation contributes, and a poetic interpretation of material wastage can be seen in Nicola Humphrey’s ‘How We Used to Live’.
Nature creeps and twines, and in ‘Urban Wildlife’ Richard Salsbury tells how the ‘red flash of a fox’ may now be a familiar sight, while the current demise of the hedgehog is made more urgent when we consider it is an ‘ancient species, older even than the woolly mammoth’. These modern realities resonate with Alison Haben’s poem ‘Southsea But Plastic Free’ which contemplates what archaeologists of the future might make of tangled fishing lines, car tyres and sanitary towels, all positioned as damning artefacts that litter our present and impact the future. Haben’s visually vibrant and insightful poem leads us back to Brooke Wain’s significant study of recycling and sustainability explored through ‘Tides of Change’.
There seems a myriad ways this collection crosses and re-crosses from fiction to poetry to non-fiction, all somehow touching the same soft but painful centres while still leading into positive outcomes through clear and achievable actions.
This resonates with those initial fissures in rock and hammered granite. Even rock itself can be malleable, altered by time or natural forces, or by the living species – including humans – that affect it. Borrowing from a popular cliché (not usually encouraged within creative writing), perhaps the final thought this collection evokes is to see our future as being not ‘between a rock and a hard place’, but between a moveable rock and a better place. Projects such as this Pens of the Earth collaboration can affect change, taking us not only to that better place, but to a place beyond, where imagination, integrity, research, intention, and words – simple words – merge together to evolve those positive fractures that can shift – and shape – the world.
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All proceeds from sales to the Solent Seagrass Restoration Project.
Dr Judy Waite is the author of over fifty published works, including award winning Young- Adult and children’s fiction, short stories, non-fiction and academic publications. She specialises in creativity both within education, and in the wider community. Judy teaches creative writing at University of Winchester.
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